


Family Resemblance

by Dain



Series: trans zuko [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Family Issues, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Post-Series, Realization, Trans Character, Transitioning, fun fact: it is not easy to figure out similarities in the faces of animated characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 05:28:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21192332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dain/pseuds/Dain
Summary: She’s searching her reflection for any hint of her mother, trying to recall a face she hasn’t seen since she was a child.





	Family Resemblance

Zuko’s sitting at a small desk with a mirror propped up on it, her head down as she struggles to pull her hair back into a topknot. Usually an attendant would help her with her hair, but she’s experimenting, and she prefers to experiment in the privacy of her own chambers. Everyone who works in the palace knows she’s a woman by now, but things like trying out new hairstyles still make her feel exposed and vulnerable; she wants to do a trial run by herself before she invites anyone else into this particular step forward. Besides, this is a simple hairstyle; all she has to do is draw back the hair from the top of her head and secure it, but that’s proving to be easier said than done.

She finally manages to tie off a bundle of hair and decides that’s as much as she can hope to accomplish on her own. She looks up to check her handiwork-

-and freezes.

The knot is messy and lopsided, with hairs sticking out every which way, but that’s not unexpected. What gives her pause is whose face she’d seen in the mirror for just a moment.

Azula doesn’t look especially like either of their parents, her features blended enough to be unique, but Zuko looks undeniably like Ozai. She’d been proud of that resemblance when she was young, proud that she looked like the man she so desperately wanted to please, the man she was always trying to live up to. Now, though, she’s searching her reflection for any hint of her mother, trying to recall a face she hasn’t seen since she was a child.

Her eyes are Ozai’s, if she ignores the scar. Her mouth is his as well, although less so when she smiles. When she was young she had rounded cheeks, but in the last year or two she’s shed some of her baby fat and her face has narrowed, making her cheekbones stand out like his.

For a moment she thinks it was just wishful thinking, a momentary trick of the light, and her face is Ozai’s after all. Even the scar is his, in a way. But her nose, she notices, is narrower than his, flatter; is that what her mother’s nose looked like? She can’t remember. And it’s a subtle difference, but she thinks her face is more ovular than Ozai’s; she’s sure her mother had an ovular face.

The differences are minor and not entirely certain, not when compared to a face she barely remembers, but still they lighten her heart. She knows it’s not enough to stop other people from seeing Ozai when they look at her, knows that wearing her hair like her mother isn’t going to change anything, knows that she’s still going to have to fight to be recognized as anything but Ozai’s legacy, but it makes a difference to her. She raises her hand to her cheek and brushes her fingers against the scarred skin there. Someday, perhaps, she’ll be able to look in a mirror without seeing him there looking back at her.


End file.
